


The Bargain

by PornAccount



Category: Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Picts, Playing fast and loose with historical facts, Proto-Scots, Vikings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-19 06:40:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22006747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PornAccount/pseuds/PornAccount
Summary: The north wind sighs in the winter-bare branches of the willows, making the embers of fire flicker and glow, small puffs of fine, white ash whirl and dance on the black wind.Lost souls, homeless and alone.Like her.
Relationships: Dillion/Senua (Hellblade)
Kudos: 13





	The Bargain

**Author's Note:**

> So I played Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice recently and what a conga-line of emotional gut punches that was. And I got the itch again.
> 
> If you have played that game, you know what's ahead. If you haven't and for some reason still find this story, be warned. 
> 
> Ahead there be dragons. Emotional and physical torture. Severe self-esteem and mental health issues. Manipulation. Gaslighting. 
> 
> All shoved through a meatgrinder and liberally spiced with Nordic Mythology and the 8th Century conflict of native Picts and invading Vikings on the Orkney Islands.

The north wind sighs in the winter-bare branches of the willows, making the embers of fire flicker and glow, small puffs of fine, white ash whirl and dance on the black wind.

Lost souls, homeless and alone.

Like her.

Senua pulls Dillion’s wolf skin cloak tighter around her, carefully grinding the mixture of crushed tree bark and urine into the goat skin. She has no salt to preserve it properly, nothing to trade with and nobody who would barter with a cursed outcast anyway, but her shoes are falling apart and she has to make do.

_Dillion would, you know that. He would take you into his roundhouse, stoke the fire high, hot barely porridge and laughter and his heart beat next to yours._

Senua stills and steels herself against the whispering voices circling her like a pack of wolves a lost fawn.

_No, he wouldn’t. Don’t be stupid._

**_Yes, he would, he loves you. For all the good it has done him. Stupid, ungrateful girl. Wretched Raven._ **

_He loves his people more and there is no place for you there. Lost girl. Lost ghost. Cythraul. Doom bringer._

Senua clenches fingers, numb from cold, around her scraper and grits her teeth.

“Enough!”

For once her furies heed her command and recede to indistinct giggling.

Druth groans and mutters in his sleep, emaciated hands twitching against some unseen danger. Nobody next to this fireplace sleeps easy.

The wind whistles and howls, a high and lonely sound, cold enough to make the soul freeze. Shadows dance and writhe as flames flicker.

It is the hour of the wolf, when sleep is the deepest, heart beat and breathing so slow and deep they might fade into nothingness, when life itself might flicker and extinguish like candle in the black wind.

The time when the gates of the netherworld become unlocked, when the walls and wards become fluid and permeable, the hour of secret murder, of poisoners, undead, cursed revenants and restless ghosts. 

_My hour._

Branches creak and snap. Senua stills, straining her ears, eyes flicking to the sword, wrapped in oil cloth by her bed roll. Something is moving in the underbrush.

**_“Why did she leave it? Does she not value it?”_ **

_“Dillion gave it to her.”_

**_“Sooo stupid. Does she want to die?”_ **

_“Maybe she does.”_

_**“The coward’s way out. Of course. They deserved better. He deserved better.”** _

Heart hammering in her ears Senua forces herself to sit up slowly and carefully pick her way to her nest of brown ferns and heather to unfurl her bed roll, unwrapping her blade like an afterthought.

Steps crunch in a pocket of crusted snow, a black shape appearing at the edge of her camp, barely visible in the dim light of the setting quarter moon.

Senua rises to meet the uninvited guest, hand on the hilt of her ancient spatha.

A voice calls out; deep, sonorous, ringing with authority like a war horn. 

“Peace, warrior. I’m an old and tired man, seeking refuge at your fireplace. Are the laws of hospitality not holy to your clan and your gods? Do not Cuachag and Gamhnach offer the sweet water of their springs to the weary traveller?”

_They also drown the unwary and disrespectful in their rushing waters._

“Step into the light grandfather. Show your hands and your face.”

The wanderer rams the staff, he had been leaning on, deep into the heather and bends down to blow onto the coals and add what fuel is left until the flames flicker with new life.

The flames light an impressive salt and pepper beard, framing a craggy sun-tanned face, a gnarled scar disappearing beneath an eye-patch. A water stained leather hat is pushed back to show sweat-darkened hair, stirred by the same breeze that makes the fire blaze and for but the moment the single, sharp eye of her new companion is filled with roaring flames. 

“Will you share bread and salt with me, shield maid, so we both might rest tonight by your fire in peace?

Curiously enough her furies hold their peace for once, as if cowed into silence. The old man is making the hair on her neck stand on end. She settles in a crouch with torrwr gwythiennau next to her leg and the fire between them and strains her ears for movement in the night, breathing, breaking branches or rustling leaves, anything that might betray potential enemies lurking in the dark. 

“I have neither bread nor salt honored elder. I can offer nettle, watercress, some boiled spelt and a bit of stock fish. Not too much of either, it is winter and hunger is the only true road-companion of the lonely traveler.”

“I will provide then, a gift to my hostess.”

Senua bites her lip hard, in-grained respect, pride and fear war with the hunger coiling in her gut, but finally she nods her assent.

“I would be honored grandfather, let me wake my companion that he too may partake and be bound by this covenant.”

The old man raises a finger, and the flames shiver, making shadows grow and dance; Senua, too, stills, obeying the unspoken command without thinking.

“Leave him to his sleep. A dead man. Not long for this world. He has given you all you would need. “

Some cold and winding crawls up Senua’s spine, her eyes never leaving her unbidden guest as she rises to her feed, slipping a hand width of her steel smoothly from its sheat, the red glow of the dying embers bathing torrwr gwythiennau in blood.

“Longer than anyone who would do him harm.”

The world holds its breath, like an insect suspended in amber, even the wind stills as in fright, until silence engulfs her world and nothing is left but the sound of a weaver’s shuttle shooting back and forth, the whisper-quite rustle of thread being spun and woven.

The old man meets her eye, his single yellow wolf eye reflecting fire, reflecting rot engulfing her village, her clan, her island, Dillion. A tree of decay and death sending its black tendrils to the very foundations of reality.

Something unhinges and the world topples sideways, like a mortally wounded man trying to hold in his guts.

Senua falls forward in the soundless of maelstrom of darkness, as disjointed images assault her, memories she hasn’t (yet?) lived, sounds, voices, smells.

Foxglove, delphinium, hollyhocks, lavender and a mutilated corps, gently swinging in the warm spring breeze. She shies away from the image reflexively, like a hand from a fire, but it’s too late, too late, too late … something in her breaks and splinters.

Laughing, crawling, weeping madness.

Rotting corpses without count, mounted on gore smeared stakes.

The faces of neighbors, friends, shield brothers, the man she loves hissing their tormented hate in her face.

The beast’s voice rough like grave mount gravel whispering pain and self-hate.

Blood-drenched hate. A sword dancing in her hands, carving flesh into red ribbons.

Desperate determination, deep and strong and sure like the roots of the snow-peaked mountains.

_I’ll set him free._

Her mother engulfed by flame.

A leech-white corpse goddess.

And finally freedom. The lightness of a woman, that has nothing left to fight and nothing left to loose, no passion, no hate, no love; her soul like a plain of fine, white volcanic ash stretching to the endless horizon, waiting for spring.

Silent and white and still like the endless snowy planes of the Northlands, stretching while the stars and glowing nebulae wheel over the black firmament, cold and merciless and beautiful, seconds or centuries hiss like sand in the hourglass.

Waiting.

Waiting … for something.

Until finally the Voice fills her world like thunder.

“No, this will not do.”

An unseen fist jerks her upwards, none to gently. A whirling flurry of black raven feathers surrounds her and darkness fills her world until finally, after minutes or millennia, a pin prick of light appears, growing to a house sized, eight-legged, black stallion.

She finds herself astride the enormous beast, high above the clouds, lit from below by endless fire storms, spreading in the wake of her passing.

The Voice speaks to her. “Do you see, Senua ap Zynbel, why I have need of you? The wolf stirs in his prison. Ragnarok is nigh and I have no intention of leaving your blade to be collected by Hela. I offer salvation, deliverance for your clan and the man you love. What can you offer me in return? What bargain, what covenant of equal value will you propose?”

Senua lies prostrate under the hammer blows of the thought-words filling her world to bursting, leaving no space in her head for herself, but she struggles first to her knees and then her feed by sheer strength of will.

“My life. My soul. My sword.”

The Voice considers. Senua feels like an insect caught in amber displayed during market day at the Broch, unseen eyes peering into the depths of her soul, measuring and judging.

“If the scales are found wanting, your people and your love will be doomed. I ask again, is your offering sufficient Senua ap Zynbel, sworn sword of Clan Cruithin?”

Senua croaks a bitter laugh. Is a cursed death bringer, a cythraul, a swollen boil of pestilent evil, good enough for a healer, a protector, a shield to his people? She has known the answer to that particular question for years, even if she has preferred to pretend ignorance.

Desperately her gaze flits around the twilight sky, the false dawn of the firestorms lighting the curve of the world miles below her, the freezing wind whipping into her face and drying her tears.

There is one more thing she might be able to sell. Little hope that the voice might be interested in her wares and a needle of bitter pain in her heart, quickly and ruthlessly squashed, are part of the bargain.

“I have lain with no man, I can offer you my maiden blood, if that will balance the scales.”

This is only partly a lie and Senua concentrates on burying those memories as deep as she can, both to keep them from the Voice and because this (bright/warm/heated/yearning/love) has no place here and she can’t let her Darkness sully it, can’t remember it without wanting useless, weak, needy, vulnerable things.

“Do you take me for a courting bridegroom? Your maiden blood holds no value for me. My interest lies in another kind of blood sacrifice. How much blood are the lives of your people and your betrothed worth to you? How many Northmen would you slay to protect them?”

“All of them.” The answer comes quick and easy, tasting like blood and iron on her tongue, raising like a swamp gas bubble from a place deep and dark in the shadowed corners of her heart, where years of anger, pain and helpless hate have been left to fester, where the Darkness rules.

For but a breathless heartbeat, everything hangs in the balance, before the Voice answers with an unmistakable tone of triumphant greed.

“Done and Done and Done, Senua ap Zynbel.”

“Done by the thread the Spinner spins, woven from the thread of all that was.”

“Done by the tapestry the Weaver weaves, formed where might collapses into is.”

“Done by the strings the Cutter plucks and the knife She wields, to rule the shadow lands of all that will be.”

“Done once for hate and once love and once for death.”

“Done once for birth and once for live and once for death.”

“We have a bargain Senua ap Zynbel. Fill my halls with slain heroes, let the rivers run red, let their shield walls break and their city walls crumble.”

“Build me a throne of skulls and give me your sword and soul.”

“Any less and I will consider our covenant null and void and I will come for what is mine.”

“Listen well now, for no wisdom comes without a prize and like me you must pay to drink from this well.”

She wakes back among the heather of her cold camp-site, on the highlands of windswept eastern headlands of Arcaibh. The first pale light of the late winter dawn paints the storm clouds at the eastern horizon a thousand shades of carmine and crimson.

_Let the rivers run red, Senua ap Zynbel. This is our bargain._

The last stars are fading high overhead and Druth mutters in his sleep. Of her nightly visitor there is no sign.

No matter. Senua knows what is required of her.

With patient haste she builds the fire with her last pieces of dry driftwood and peat, while the morning fog rises all around her.

Carefully she places torrwr gwythiennau among the hot coals until the steel of the sword, she has sworn to wield in her clan’s defense, is glowing a dull red.

With shaking hand she takes her blade from the fire and kneels, legs weak with fear, places the tip of the blade a hand span from her left eye, shoves a wad of leather between her teeth, tries to steel herself against the coming pain.

Leans forward.

A red hot ball of agony explodes in her face, fills her world like previously only the Darkness could, looming, all-devouring, leaving no place for thought or wish or deed or sense of self or anything but the pain, an angry god, ruling over all like the sun over a cloudless midsummer sky.

With the smell of her sizzling flesh in her nostrils, Senua falls forward into roiling, merciful darkness.

***

She wakes with the taste of stale vomit in her mouth and white hot needles of agony stabbing into her brain with every heartbeat, but most importantly she wakes with knowledge.

Druth is kneeling over her, eyes wide, lips moving soundlessly. She can’t hear him over the sound of the rushing blood in her ears. No matter.

Her third eye is open know and she _remembers. She sees._

_My captors were distracted. A man in black came to the long ships, a druid. He was promised safe passage in return for leading them to easy prey, so that they might slay his enemies._

Senua bats Druths hands away and stumbles to her feet, weak like a kitten, agony tearing into her face.

She starts running.


End file.
